Next ‘Destiny’ Patch To Add Colorblind Mode, New Audio Options

Destiny is a game that is dependent on using color to communicate gameplay elements from loot to enemy shields. That makes things a little difficult for those who are colorblind. Bungie announced Thursday that the next patch for the PlayStation and Xbox shooter will provide visual accessibility options, plus new audio options. There’s also a tease about Vault space.

Bungie revealed that Destiny patch 1.1.2 will include a “Colorblind Mode” that will adapt the game’s user interface to support those with Deuteranopia (Red-Green), Protanopia (Red-Green), and Tritanopia (Yellow-Blue) color blindness.

“Adapting the existing user interface to support various color blind modes turned out to be a fairly complex challenge, but we managed to build a flexible toolkit for our designers that helped them do just that with minimally-invasive surgery and no negative impact to existing functionality,” User Interface Engineering Brad Fish explained in the Bungie Weekly Update.

Part of the solution behind this is to increase the contrast between the different colors. So, even though a Captain’s and Minotaur’s shield may both look blue to someone with Deuteranopic color blindness, they will be significantly different shades of blue.

Destiny players that select the Deuteranopia will see higher contrasts between colors.

This is a nice quality of life feature that is a frequent request for most games, but never implemented. Bungie’s ability to listen to the community and provide accessibility support to the colorblind was overwhelmingly positively received in the Destinysubreddit.

@Bungie as a colorblind player, this is extremely helpful. I can’t even explain how excited I am for this update. Thanks Bungie! — Rob Kerpan (@robkerpan) March 19, 2015

As a bonus change to the user interface, Bungie is also increasing the size of the triangular loot drops that come from Major (Yellow bar) enemies and bosses to the same size as grey engrams. Their current small size makes it a fairly common occurrence to completely miss when they are dropped.

Destiny players will also be able to make changes between the game volume and chat volume inside the game’s settings. Bungie is also throwing in the ability to mute the game’s music based on community requests. This will provide the ability to listen to your own music if you get tired of game’s score.

Finally, Community Manager David “Deej” Dague teased some kind of announcement next week for Vault space. He acknowledged in a previous update that more storage space for Guardian weapons and gear is at the top of Bungie’s list to add before the House of Wolves expansion is released. However, there’s no guarantee that the storage space increase will be included in the patch. Let’s hope that next Thursday’s update brings good news then.

What do you think of the new color blind accessibility and audio changes coming for Destiny? Sound off in the comments below.